Tigers put up 16 on CM

Published
12:00 am CDT, Saturday, March 21, 2015

BETHALTO – This is the type of day that has Civic Memorial Eagles baseball coach Gary Bruening reconsidering retirement.

“It wasn’t bad for a doubleheader,” Bruening joked after it took 2 hours, 40 minutes for the Edwardsville Tigers to put away the Eagles 16-1 in a single seven-inning game at the Bethalto Sports Complex. “It was two, right, for as long as we’ve been here. Obviously, I don’t have to tell you that we didn’t play well. There’s no sugarcoating that.

CM’s defense committed six errors and CM’s pitching issued nine walks to set the Tigers free to run for 11 stolen bases in 11 attempts. Bad turned to worse for the Eagles in the seventh inning when Edwardsville turned a beating into a burial with eight runs on six hits, one walk and two CM errors.

For Bruening, back for his second season at CM after two years retired following a long stint as Eagles coach, it was a Friday flashback.

“It was the same scene last night down in Mount Vernon,” Bruening said of CM’s 7-6 eight-inning loss Friday after the Rams rallied to win. “We’re up 6-4, we give up three in bottom of the eighth after we score two and get beat 7-6 and five of those runs were unearned.”

The Eagles, who are back home Tuesday against Breese Central, are 0-2. It was the opener for Edwardsville, which returns much of the firepower from last season’s 32-8 squad that reached a Class 4A super-sectional.

“We’ve got a lot of guys who can play,” said Tigers coach Tim Funkhouser, who is 24 wins away from matching Tom Pile’s 509 victories for No. 1 all-time with Edwardsville baseball. “Overall, our plate appearances got better as the game went on. We had better timing and were able to do different things with some guys having a little pop and run the bases too. I was really pleased with the way we performed today.”

The Tigers had only outhit the Eagles 5-4 through six innings, but CM was too mistake-prone to prevent the Tigers from drawing off.

“I don’t care who you’re playing — if it’s Edwardsville or if it’s somebody that’s never any good — you can’t give teams what amounts to free passes,” Bruening said. “It’s happened two games in a row. We’ve got some things we really need to clean up. We will.”

Caleb Buhs ripped a two-out triple in the first inning and the Eagles had runners on first and second with two outs in the third, but could not push across a run off Tigers starter Daniel Lloyd.

“Daniel was pretty good,” Funkhouser said of Lloyd, who allowed three hits, two walks and struck out four in three innings. “It looked like he had a pretty good fastball and his command was fairly sharp. It will get even better.”

CM’s lone run came in the fourth inning when Devin Daniels and Lukas Jones hit one-out singles before Daniels advanced on a fielder’s choice and scored on Chris Robinson’s wild pitch. Robinson worked two innings for the Tigers before Tyler Hosto and Trey Riley each pitched one inning and struck out two.

Edwardsville scored two runs in the second inning without a hit to add punishment for three infield errors by CM. The Tigers, who scored in each of the final six innings, got two hits, including a home run, and three RBIs from Matthew Zielonko, two hits and two RBIs from Collin Clayton and two RBIs each from SIUE recruits Brock Weimer and Aaron Jackson.